There were no apologies for absence.

There were no declarations of pecuniary interest.

RESOLVED: That the minutes of the meeting of the Joint Regulatory Service Committee held on 25 June 2019 were agreed as a correct record.

Members to note and comment on the report.

The Environmental Health Pollution Manager introduced members of the joint services pollution team and presented the report. The Team Manger outlined that there were a large number of work streams being undertaken across the partnership in relation to air quality including work on a project to introduce the first low emission zone for construction which covers all London boroughs and aims to remove the dirtiest equipment and gauge levels of emissions removed.

Individual & joint Borough initiatives were outlined, as were the service priorities across the members of the partnership.

The Environmental Health Pollution Manager advised the Committee of the following in response to member’s questions:

·         There was a variation in the number of diffusion tubes across the RSP (70 in Richmond, 50 in Merton and 22 in Wandsworth) however, Wandsworth had more automated monitoring stations. There was work being undertaken to review the diffusion tube network in Wandsworth , however consistent monitoring data is required so the timing of this work has to be considered.

·         There was a commitment to look at Clean Air Zones and a Clean Air Village in Merton – there was LIP funding received which would be available from 2020.

·         The Councils continued to lobby TfL relating to cleaner less polluting buses.

Members thanked officers for the work undertaken thus far.

RESOLVED: That members noted and commented on the report.

The Head of the Regulatory Services Partnership presented the report which gave an overview of the current fee structures across the partnership. Fees could be categorised under Statutory Set, Discretionary and those which were capped. The report concerned the structures for discretionary fees, mainly for MST providers and premises.

The next steps would be to look at the structures and to work towards consistency across the partnership and this work would aim to be completed by Spring/Summer 2020 and would then be brought to the relevant committees for each Borough.

Members thanked officers for their work and asked whether there had been any monitoring taking place on the time it took to process applications through to the granting of the licence. The Head of the Regulatory Services Partnership advised that time monitoring was difficult as each Borough had different systems and therefore it was difficult to consistently monitor this, however time/motion studies were planned to look at the amount of officer time required. This would be looked at over the next six months and there was currently work in progress to join the three borough’s systems together.

In response to further questions, the Head of the Regulatory Service advised that whilst statutory consultation on Licensing applications was set by the Licensing Act 2003, work was being undertaken to develop a “planning portal” type system for Licensing applications to provide more information in the public domain, in a similar way to planning applications.

RESOLVED: That Members noted and commented on the framework for the setting of discretionary fees within the Regulatory Services Partnership and the timetable for a fundamental review of the fee structure.

To formally agree and note the re-scheduled date for the February 2020 meeting of the Joint Regulatory Service Committee, which is to take place on Tuesday 11 February 2020 at 10am at the Merton Civic Offices.

RESOLVED: That the next meeting date of 11 February 2020 was agreed.